Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (09:42): by leave—I move: That the House calls on the Government to provide for: (1) the allocation of resources for the Auditor-General to audit the reef science specific to turbidity and nutrient run off to the Great Barrier Reef to provide quality assurance in the assessment of the current reef studies; and (2) a further allocation to audit current and future funding expenditure on the Great Barrier Reef action plans and studies, including the $120 million for crown-of-thorns starfish. The sugar industry of Queensland brings in between $4,000 and $5,000 million a year. In fact, in Queensland we have only two major employers of significance. One is the sugar industry. In fact, if you go up the coastline, you see that Nambour was a sugar city but is not now; Maryborough is a sugar city; Bundaberg is a sugar city; Rockhampton and Gladstone are not sugar cities; Mackay, the next city up, is a sugar city; Sarina is a sugar town; Proserpine is a sugar town; Ayr is a sugar town; Townsville is a sugar city; and then there is Ingham. I could go on from Cairns right up to Mossman. The entire Queensland coastline is dependent upon this industry for its economic existence. It may come as an extraordinary shock to the people that run Queensland—the two women who seem to consider having little babies killed before they are born a more important priority than actually doing something for the state of Queensland—that what they are proposing with the regulation of run-off onto the Barrier Reef would make it impossible for us to keep our soil nutritional. We have often advocated—and most of the industry is moving to this—a higher level of organic matter which makes the chemicals work better, but no-one, in the wildest stretch of their imagination, unless they know absolutely nothing about agricultural science, would propose that you attempt to do farming without any chemical fertiliser whatsoever. As for the run-off, let me take the town of Ingham. There are 83 of what we call silt ponds, so all of the run-off from the farm goes into a settling pond. Then, once all the solid matter—namely, the fertilising chemicals—has filtered out, it overflows as clean water into the sea and onto the Barrier Reef. The idea here—and I have to be honest—is not to look after the Barrier Reef, because we've been farming there for 150 years. If we turn the clock back to 20, 25 or 40 years ago, before people started making big money out of screaming and bad-mouthing the reef, if no-one had ever claimed that run-off onto the Barrier Reef was destroying the Barrier Reef, nor was any evidence ever produced. Most of the talk on the Barrier Reef was about the crown-of-thorns starfish. So what has triggered this sudden concern about the Barrier Reef? The Institute of Marine Science has been there for nearly 40 years now, and I interface regularly with people from the Institute of Marine Science, from the chairman all the way down to the janitor. I enjoyed a very close relationship with Dr Joe Baker, who founded the Institute of Marine Science. So I have always been extremely close, as is my duty. I represent an electorate that covers the most populated part of the coastline near the Barrier Reef, the area around Cairns and Townsville, which is the area most dependent upon tourism from the Barrier Reef. The last people on the planet who will want to be damaging the Barrier Reef are we people that live in North Queensland. I've done scuba diving. Most people in North Queensland at one time or another have been out on the reef fishing, scuba diving or whatever. It is our great place of recreation. We would react in great anger if someone were destroying the reef. Just so people get a little idea about science and know what they're talking about, there is one of the galahs at JCU, the most condemned university in Australia. We're into Galileo stuff with Peter Ridd, a bloke who said you've got to test before you make a statement. There's got to be empirical evidence backing up the scientific theory. That's what he said. Because he kept saying it, they threw him out of the university. The Galileo example is very prescient. Galileo was famous. He was the father of science, because he said that a scientific principle put forward must be backed up with empirical evidence. Peter Ridd is the father of the device which measures turbidity and reef run-off contaminants. He's very famous. The devices are sold throughout the world. Our tiny little political party has a policy that those devices should be on every river mouth. We're not scared of fronting up if someone—or even the whole industry—is doing the wrong thing, but the monitors are already there and they are not registering a problem. There are basically only two big employers in Queensland: the coal industry and the sugar industry. The ALP government in Queensland—no, not the ALP government in Queensland; that's not correct. The two women that are at the head of the ALP government in Queensland are most lacking in thought and intellectual capacity. They lack any governmental abilities and don't have any understanding whatsoever of insider trading. If they stay there, of course, there will be yet another landslide in Queensland, because the people are not so dumb as to fail to realise that the economy of the state depends upon sugar and coal. There are other things—I'm very proud of my homeland, Mount Isa, where we produce copper, silver, lead, zinc and other things; I'm very proud of the aluminium industry, which my party created for Australia—but they are nothing compared to the sugar industry, upon which almost every coastal town and city depends for its existence. The Gold Coast—I don't know if the sugar mill is still there—was a very big sugar-growing centre. Having said all these things, we are moving this motion because we want to face up to real, scientific truth. The people running away and hiding from it are those advocating for the draconian measures taken on the reef, which were instituted by Robert Hill. I'm ashamed to admit—my mother would be very upset if she knew—that I used some extremely bad language when I saw the parameters that he was imposing upon us on reef run-off. It would close the entire sugar industry of Queensland. I said: 'Are you completely mad? You'll close the whole sugar industry down.' He said, 'In that case they shouldn't have been growing sugarcane there in the first place.' To give you an idea of the lack of science: two of the loudest vegan advocates at JCU, a university shot to pieces with vegan advocates and the antiscience brigade, said that there must be immediate action because the dugong numbers have dropped by half. No-one read the report except me. I had read the report, and the dugong numbers had dropped by half on the southern half of the reef. But these two so-called scientists who got all the publicity forgot to mention that the dugong numbers had doubled on the top half of the reef. What had happened? I did a lot of research. I spoke to senior scientists at AIMS. We had had a terrible drought in the bottom half of the reef. Central Queensland had terrible drought; North Queensland didn't. There was no run-off, so the seagrass was not getting fertilised by the nutrient run-off. If you impose these draconian nutrient conditions, goodbye dugong, because they also need nutritious grasses that are created by some small but extremely important nutritional run-off, which has been running off for 150 years now. Here is an example of an absolutely flagrant lie, a flagrant untruth, coming out of JCU. There are certain good elements at JCU—our medical school is the pride of Australia; it is easily the most important medical school in Australia for a whole raft of reasons that I don't have time to speak about today—but its good work is being drowned out by what is happening there. There is a second matter. I praise our candidate in the seat of Leichhardt for bringing this to public attention. The people who are screaming about the Barrier Reef are making a squillion dollars out of the Barrier Reef. It turns out that $120 million allocated to remove the crown-of-thorns starfish has gone to a certain organisation; it went from GBRMPA. This organisation has a relative in GBRMPA—a very close relative. So GBRMPA gives this organisation $120 million and this organisation had an agreement with the CEO that he gets 10 per cent of all moneys they raise—I am reliably informed by two members of GBRMPA, one of whom will come forward. So he gets $12 million straight off. He is the CEO, and the CEO gets 10 per cent of all moneys raised. That's not uncommon. So he refers it to an extremely good friend of his, and she has a scientific assessment group. So he gives it to them and she scientifically assesses it and recommends that it goes to his company to do the work. So what we want to know is how much of that $120 million actually went to removing the starfish from the reef. I have constantly held up in this place a picture of a charter boat operator—a couple of his boys and a couple of their mates—who have picked what looks to be about 2,000 starfish on the beach in one afternoon, for free. He just wants to do his job of fixing up the reef. If you gave these charter operators $1 per starfish, you would be killed in the rush. Our tourism is down over 50 per cent. There are two or three elements to this. The major element is the continuous badmouthing and denigration of the reef. I had a press conference this week to announce what I was doing here. I took along to that press conference a front-page story from, I think, TheSunday Mail in which David Attenborough said the reef is beautiful, it is in wonderful condition and it is one of the wonders of the world. But when he got back to England he started telling everyone that the reef was shattered and dying. So he was singing a different tune when he was here in Australia. But let me put that to one side and go back to the money. The second part of this is that there are people who are screaming about the Barrier Reef. Are they concerned about the Barrier Reef or have they found themselves a big milking cow? Clearly, on the evidence in the brown paper envelope that I received—and I know that the same documents went to the Federal Police and their investigations are continuing. How much of that money went there, or was it just a protection racket for those screaming about the Barrier Reef? That's what we want to find out. (Time expired) The SPEAKER: Is the motion moved by the member for Kennedy seconded? This motion fails for want of a seconder. Mr Katter: Mr Speaker, I accept your ruling but I would like a vote on that. The SPEAKER: No. To have a vote on your motion, it needs to be seconded. If it's not seconded, it fails for want of a seconder; it lapses. It is not a question of my opinion; it is the standing orders adopted by this House. That's why every motion requires a seconder. Every member moving a motion requires a seconder, and that includes you.